Caught in a Web – The Dissident by Paul Goldberg

A very hard book to read, and like, in my opinion. Another of my choices to read and rate for the Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award, I had very different expectations, based on the brief synopsis provided by the prize organizers (and the rather deceptive jacket copy). 

Set in 1978, as the Soviet Union was beginning to disintegrate, it is a story about Refuseniks, especially one in particular, Viktor, a Jewish man who is stuck in Moscow, since the government has refused his visa request to emigrate to Israel. Of course, this was a common situation at that time with many Jews seeking to leave for Israel or the United States. I knew a few who managed it, and spent some time getting a taste of their world in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, visiting the shops and restaurants. 

Since it is the Soviet Union, he gets caught up in the impenetrable web of a KGB murder investigation, after he comes upon the scene of the crime, and is seen leaving the site. Viktor's hero is none other than Henry Kissinger, certainly a highly controversial figure on his own, but who is supposed to be arriving for a state visit when the murder, which involved an American, took place. The investigation must be resolved before Kissinger's visit, as it will be a diplomatic issue.

As Winston Churchill said, Soviet Russia is "A riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.", and that is certainly true of this novel. Perhaps obtaining a view of that warped world was the author's point, but I just couldn't go along. 

In my Mark Twain reviewer's scoring form, I said that this book did not represent an American voice, but while that's not entirely correct, the form does not provide a lot of space to elaborate. The author is a Russian immigrant who came to the United States as a teenager, so while you could say his is one of many hyphenated American ethnicities writing in the United States today, with the setting of this book in Moscow, it is very far away from what I find to be a relatable tale or an accessible point of view. 

Generations of History – The Night Travelers by Armando Lucas Correa

This novel is about four generations of women and has multiple settings: Nazi Germany, Cuba during both the Batista and Castro regimes, New York, and the reunited Germany after the fall of the Berlin Wall and into the near present.

Ally is a beautiful young German poet in Berlin who has a relationship with Marcus, a Black German jazz musician, while Hitler and his Fascism is sweeping the country. Marcus eventually disappears and is presumed dead. Ally has given birth to a daughter, Lilith, a brilliant child whom she realizes she must hide away since the child is a Mischling – of two races – and forbidden and hated by the Nazis and their policy of racial purity. The two go out only by night where Lilith's darker skin tone and hair texture are not on display. 

Very painfully, Ally concludes she can only protect Lilith by sending her away, and the child joins the Herzogs, a Jewish couple on the ill-fated SS St. Louis on its way to Cuba, where they are some of the very small number allowed to enter that country, despite its promise to take in the ship's large number of Jewish refugees. The St. Louis will also be rejected by FDR's government, and returns to Germany, where its remaining passengers will be murdered in the concentration camps.

Lilith is raised by the Herzogs and eventually she and her closest friend, Martín, fall in love and marry. Martín is a Cuban air force  pilot and his family is close to the Batista government. The two have a daughter, Nadine, but Martín is killed when Castro takes over. Lilith, through contacts in the Catholic church, follows her mother Ally's path, and arranges for Nadine to be sent to Queens, New York where she is raised by a couple there – the man is a veteran of World War II, and his wife is a German immigrant he met while serving abroad. The wife hides a terrible secret.

Nadine inherits her mother's intelligence and becomes a scientist. She is multi-lingual and moves to Germany, where she marries Anton. They have a daughter, Luna, whose skin color echoes her grandmother's. As an adult, Luna, always a voracious reader and writer, convinces Nadine to explore her family history, something she has long avoided.

This is a complex story – part family saga, part historical epic, part study of the complexity of racial, religious, ethnic, and sexual preferences. It's beautifully written, and examines many difficult, challenging topics many authors, and readers, may choose to avoid, but there is much to learn here. 

I would also encourage readers not to skip the Author's Note following the end, which provides  background on some of the issues raised in the text, the first two paragraphs of the Acknowledgements, and the extensive Bibliography. This author truly did his homework... 

Early 20th Century Palestine in Transition – The Parisian by Isabella Hammad

The Parisian, or Al-Barisi in Arabic, is the nickname given to Midhat Kamal, a young Palestinian man who is sent to Montpellier, France by his wealthy merchant father to study medicine while World War I is upending the map of Europe and the Middle East. He lives in the home of a university professor, a widower, and his daughter Jeanette. Midhat is a sensitive and romantic man, something of a misfit, and after a falling out with the professor and Jeanette, with whom he has fallen in love, he moves on to Paris.

He returns to his home city of Nablus, north of Jerusalem, in 1919. With the defeat of the Ottoman Empire, which had ruled most of the Mediterranean area and Middle East from its homeland in what is now modern Turkey, England and France had divided the territory so that via the British Mandate, England occupied and administered the territories of Palestine, while France's were Greater Syria, including Lebanon. Egypt and Sudan were a protectorate of England, and Iraq also fell under the British Mandate. France also had many countries under its rule in North Africa (Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, etc.)

Midhat was at odds, and having left his medical studies, he goes into his father's textile business, which consists of a store and workshop in Nablus, and a larger one in Cairo. His father lives in Cairo with his second wife and family, Midhat's mother having died when he was young. Midhat lives in the family home in Nablus with his grandmother, who is like a mother to him. Eventually he marries Fatima, the beautiful daughter of an aristocratic local family.

The politics of the time are extremely complex: as the years pass, Egypt becomes independent of England, and the Arab populations in Palestine revolt, particularly against the British. Rebellions and riots break out, especially as England encourages Jewish immigration from Europe, according to the Balfour Declaration. Though Jews (and Christians) had lived in Palestine for thousands of years (and in Egypt, Syria and throughout the Middle East), they had become a minority compared to the Moslem population. As time passes, tensions increase, with targets and violence on all sides. Through the 1920s and on into the 1930s, there is constant change and turmoil, and at the same time, conditions in Germany and beyond deteriorate as the Nazis take control with the election of Hitler and passage of the Nuremberg Laws, the first step in what will become the Holocaust, though that is largely beyond the scope or interest of this novel. In fact, there is very little mention of Jews, other than as figures to be detested or feared, though Samaritans (a Jewish-related, though separate religious group) reside and are business people in Nablus.

The novel explores the life of Midhat, his family and the culture of Palestine, particularly Nablus, against this backdrop, and how events both personal and political create impact. It is powerful reading, as the book presents a less well-known picture of Palestine and the Middle East. It is also both disturbing and distressing, and very complex.

With its scope, nuance, and vast cast of characters, it is like an old-fashioned novel that may bring to mind late 19th century authors like Henry James, Edith Wharton, certain mid-twentieth century American writers, or some of the classic British, Russian and French works. With its setting 80-100 years in the past, it can feel remote, yet at the same time, it's an ominous harbinger of the current Israel-Hamas war, and other conflicts in the area provoked by terrorist groups backed by Russia and its satellites.

The book has three parts, and I found the second the most interesting overall. I felt the author was struggling a little in the third section and editing could have improved it – and it is a long book of 551 pages. It is also puzzling that the author includes a list of the very lengthy set of characters, many of whom have very similar names, at the front of the book, and a chronology of the historical and political events that shape the action at the end. Why wasn't this chronology up front? That would have been very helpful. And, nowhere is there a guide to the many Arabic and French phrases that appear throughout the text – that would have been useful too, even though I was able to puzzle many of them out without resorting to a dictionary or the internet. A map, better than the one on the end papers, would also have been a good idea. These things bring the book, and my opinion, down overall.

So Many Doubts, So Many Questions – The Land of Hope and Fear, Israel's Battle for Its Inner Soul by Isabel Kershner

Those of us who were Jewish children born in the United States not long after end of World War II and the founding of the State of Israel grew up with a rosy, inspirational set of images and ideas that are quite different from the modern, realistic picture of the country that Isabel Kershner presents in her book. 

Obviously, it has been clear that all is not milk and honey in Israel for many years, especially since the rise of Netanyahu and the hard right that supports such policies as exempting the Haredi from military service and taxes, and promotes settlements in disputed areas. 

Kershner, a long time reporter for the New York Times, and a resident of Jerusalem, presents the history and many sides of modern Israel in great depth. She examines the waves of immigration that have made the country far more complicated and heterogeneous than it was at its founding. Reading this book is illuminating, fascinating, and more than a little depressing at times. Israel cannot be kept on a pedestal – there are so many possibilities, and so much achievement, but also so many inequalities, contradictions, and frustrations for those who are minorities or viewed as outsiders. 

The book is eye-opening and thought-provoking. It was written before the current war, and ends on a note of hope, but knowing what has transpired since it was completed, makes it all the more an illuminating, compelling and vital book for those readers who are concerned about the rightward swing in politics here in the United States and other countries, and the increase in anti-Semitic (and anti-Moslem) crimes and protests. While it has no answers, it does provide some background and reasons for the alarming trends we face in the world today.

From World to World – In Search of Perfumes by Dominique Roques

This highly personal combination of memoir, travel experiences, history, and a gentle but insistent treatise on politics and environmental sustainability has been impeccably translated from the original French. 

The author is a businessman whose work caused him to spend decades traversing both familiar and remote locations around the world sourcing the essential oils produced from trees and plants that create the world's most treasured and sophisticated fragrances. His travels took him to the places and resources most recognizable, such as the roses of Bulgaria, and lavender of Provence, to the most mysterious, such as the Amazon jungles of Venezuela for tonka beans, Laos for benzoin, and Madagascar for vanilla. Some of the places he visited could be physically or politically dangerous: Haiti for vetiver, Somaliland for frankincense. 

It is an eye-opening and even mind-bending account that combines the details of the materials and production of these ingredients with the mystical and legendary allure of locations that are far from top of mind for most Westerners, but that doesn't stint on relating the dangers of exploitation of raw materials and the greed of those who profit from them – he does not hesitate to comment on the contrast of the poverty of the workers in some of these places versus the governments and others who manipulate their natural resources as well as their people.

Despite that grounding in the disturbing realities of past colonialism and current profiteering in Africa, Asia, Caribbean and South America, the romantic allure, mysticism, and myth surrounding so many of the substances and extracts that he seeks, and the famous perfumes that are the result combine in the wonderful stories that the author tells. As he says in the prologue, "Perfumes are at once familiar to us, yet mysterious.", then goes on to mention the <i>Diorissimo</i> that his mother wore, and describes how scents immediately bring up some of our most familiar and meaningful memories. The stories of his wanders around the world, and his encounters with the producers of the raw materials create both fascinating and intoxicating reading. Highly recommend.

 

Our National Nightmare – The Hidden History of Guns and the Second Amendment by Thom Hartmann

I became familiar with Thom Hartmann through his Substack, The Hartmann Report, which reports on current affairs and politics. Sometimes it is so unsettling I can only read it in small doses.

Since this book was published in 2019, gun deaths have gotten even further out of control. It seems as though there is a new incident of mass murder every week, sometimes even more often than that. It is clear that certain violent-leaning and suggestible individuals were empowered by the election and administration of Donald Trump, perhaps even more so after the January 6th insurrection, which fortunately failed. Even so, a future second term for him is a chilling prospect. That being said, in just four years, gun violence is far, far worse than it was at the time of publication and a revised edition would surely reflect that.

However, this little book is an important history and guide to the circumstances that have brought the United States to develop its dangerous relationship with firearms. It reinforced much of what I already knew on the topic, and illuminated some of the finer points of historical detail. I would recommend it for anyone interested in learning more about what brought this country to this point, and what can be done to enable much-needed change.

No, No, No – Ceremony of the Innocent by Taylor Caldwell

Every day I receive a list of bargain e-books from Book Bub. Most are low-priced, and occasionally there's even a freebie. If I find a free book of interest available on Prime, I add it to my Kindle/iPad. I also get others from Edelweiss and other sources. Between those, and the ones on my shelves and in several full shopping bags, I don't think I'll ever have the time to read them all – especially since I keep finding new and enticing titles at the library. It's a dilemma that my book loving friends will understand.

Ceremony of the Innocent (the correct title) was one of those Book Bub books, and I read a little of it on its Prime page, and initially intrigued, I requested it from my library. I was somewhat shocked when I received it but I wanted to give it a chance: The cover art and copy of this mass market paperback version is lurid and repulsive, but so indicative of the 70s, when it was first published. Refusing to be put off, I decided to delve further into it. 

I was drawn at first into the sad story of the impoverished young Ellen Porter and her Aunt May, who raised her. The time is roughly the 1890s, and they live in a small Pennsylvania town, somewhere in the northeastern area of the state. Ellen is a tall, beautiful redheaded girl who looks older and more mature than her thirteen years; May is a seamstress who also works as a maid to try to make ends meet, she is probably barely forty but poverty has aged and broken her. Seeing no alternative, she forces Ellen to end her education and persuades her client and employer, the mayor's wife, to take Ellen on as a maid in training, saying she is already fourteen, though with her height and mature looks, Ellen might pass for fifteen or sixteen. 

The small town constantly gossips about Ellen and May. Some say she is May's illegitimate daughter, that with her flaming hair and mature body, she must be sexually active – a harlot. Of course she is none of that, and is rather just a poor disadvantaged girl who looks different from the pale blondes who are considered the town beauties. There seems to be no future for her other than a life of struggle and servitude.

One day, though, she meets Jeremy, the handsome, well-educated and successful son of her employers. She is overwhelmed, as is he. Their brief encounter will stay with both of them until they meet again, and he sweeps her off and marries her.

From this point forward, the book becomes a strange stew of their continued love story, politics, religion, and commentary on the America of the early decades of the twentieth century. I found the policies she eventually ascribed to Jeremy, who had been elected to Congress, and who had originally seemed so kind and passionate, to be distasteful and hateful, to say the least. She portrayed many of the leading progressive political figures of the time with a peculiar, distorted view, bordering on what felt like an underlying paranoia, or at the very least, a deep hate for working and middle class Americans, immigrants, and others. At the same time, she seemed to warn against excesses of greed, power and capitalism, while supporting both communism and fascism almost simultaneously.

All in all, in retrospect, the entire novel becomes as lurid and offensive as this edition's cover. Her prose is dense, melodramatic, and wandering, but I kept reading in the hope that somehow Ellen would overcome her struggles – let's just say she didn't. I can only wonder how this book became the "national bestseller" touted on the cover.

And Women Too – The Real Mad Men of Advertising, a Smithsonian Film

I recently watched "The Real Mad Men of Advertising", a Smithsonian Channel documentary, produced after the conclusion of the "Mad Men" television series, which ran for seven seasons, from 2007-2015, and depicted the advertising profession in New York in the 1960s, and gave excellent insights into the trends of popular culture and the politics of the time.

The documentary is in four parts, each covering a decade, from the 1950s through the 1980s. A number of former advertising stars, including copywriter Jane Maas (1932-2018), various university professors and museum curators, and others speak about the history, trends, and famous ads of the various decades. Another leading contributor is Matthew Weiner, originator of the "Mad Men" series. Narration is by John Slattery, one of the stars of the "Mad Men" series.

The complete program runs just over 160 minutes, so it can be watched at one sitting...in fact, I would recommend it for maximum enjoyment and immersion. 

Those Days: Rock Me on the Water: 1974—The Year Los Angeles Transformed Movies, Music, Television and Politics by Ronald Brownstein

I thought this book was sensational – a well-written look at a pivotal year in American culture and politics that cleverly used the calendar as an organizational tool, with the focus on what had become the new center of it all, Los Angeles.

In June 1974, I turned nineteen, and in September returned to college for my sophomore year, making me one of the Baby Boomers that the author, Ron Brownstein, a respected journalist, mentioned so often in the text. While I certainly knew the music and TV shows he wrote about, and saw most of the movies, I was not as yet that attuned to politics, and I can't remember if back then I had ever heard of Governor Jerry Brown of California, though at some point I became aware that he was dating Linda Ronstadt, which certainly made him intriguing. I had never been to California, and had no plans at that point to go there. As a native of Philadelphia, I was East Coast-Centric, and California was the distant home of Disneyland, surfing and the Beach Boys, nothing more. New York had much more allure, though in the mid-'70s, it was crime-ridden and decaying, and going there could be a scary adventure at times (little did I know that New York would become my home less than five years later).

Over the years, I have become much more aware of the importance of Los Angeles to the music scene of that time period, but I didn't really know all that much about how the television and film industries interacted with the music world. I was also fairly hazy on the dates of the political rise of Brown, and his predecessor Ronald Reagan. I knew much more about the life and death of the Kennedys, Martin Luther King, and other key figures of the '60s, and had followed the news of Watergate and watched the hearings as they happened, but reading Brownstein's book gave me an overview that helped to put so much more of 1974 and the mostly hopeful years just before and after it in perspective. It made it abundantly clear how the country turned towards the conservatism and negative values of Reagan, leading to the nadir of the Trump presidency, and the circumstances of hate and division that were unleashed (with an interlude of overall optimism during the Clinton years, which now feels to me like some lost Nirvana).

I also found the book very entertaining and mostly positive, with so many insights from individuals such as Rob Reiner and Jackson Browne, that reminded me what it was like to be living in a time of youthful discovery, surrounded by the peers of my generation, knowing that we were just getting started, and still optimistic towards our future. 

Windy City Newswoman: White Collar Girl by Renée Rosen

In 1955, Jordan Walsh, a recent journalism school graduate, tries to break into the newspaper business as a reporter, but is stymied by the rampant sexism of the era. She lands an entry-level job at the Chicago Tribune, where she works on write-ups of weddings and other events for the society pages, and along with her other female colleagues, edits recipes under a shared pseudonym. From day one, she chafes at the bit, wanting to do more.

Jordan comes from a literary/journalistic family: her mother is a published poet and her father is a journalist working on a novel. Her brother, Eliot, was an investigative reporter until he died in a hit-and-run accident two earlier, leaving the family bereft and broken. Jordan is determined to follow in Eliot's footsteps, but also to make a name for herself.

Many famous real-life names dot the pages of this novel where they are worked in as friends or colleagues of Jordan's parents, but they add color and texture to the story and don't feel like simple namedropping. Actual events of the period concerning politicians and criminals are also part of the stories that Jordan and her fictional colleagues pursue, which add further authenticity.

Renée Rosen's descriptions of the Chicago of the time feel spot on. The seedy bars, diners and dirty streets are very evocative, and of course, everybody smokes everywhere and uses pay phones. It's easy to imagine Jordan confronting cops, political hacks and others...along with her incredibly sexist male superiors and co-workers.

The novel is a fast and compelling read, and covers Jordan's family problems and romantic entanglements as well as her ambition and work. She sounds like a woman that many readers will recognize, if not in themselves, but in the older generations of women who worked so hard to succeed in a man's world.

The author is very careful to provide documentation for the adjustments to the historical timeline, and how she managed to effectively merge real and fictional events. Well done, Renée Rosen.

Note: strictly coincidentally, I recently read and reviewed another novel by Rosen, What the Lady Wants,  also with a Chicago setting, quite enjoyable but not as fast-paced and snappy as this one.  I'll be checking out more of her work shortly.

Madam Speaker: Pelosi by Molly Ball

Molly Ball's biography of Nancy Pelosi is packed with detail, but some of it is incredibly silly and distracting: do we really need to read about Seth Moulton's square jaw, or Hakeem Jeffries's "bald pate" and "lilting accent"?

It started off well – I found the chapters describing Pelosi's childhood and rise in the Democratic party very interesting. Later, the sections covering her political process with President George Bush were also a good reminder of the issues of that period. 

I must also say that Ball lays into President Obama with vehemence to the extent that her disapproval of him is palpable. She is highly critical of his stewardship of the economy, and his rescue of the country's finances after the deep hole the Bush administration left behind seems much diminished here. The emphasis seems to be on his conflicts with Pelosi, and while those have already been reported upon, she seems to heighten them to an unbalanced level.

Once we came to the Trump era, it was all too familiar. The incidents she covered have all been examined ad infinitum in the New York Times, Washington Post, on CNN and by other news outlets. Since we are in the closing days of that horrendous presidency and there is hope on the horizon, I really did not want to relive the nightmare of the past four years. I merely wanted to finish the book, and after having invested so much time on it, was not going to drop it, but skipped through quickly. I was happy to come to the end.

Reaching the Heights – Becoming, a Memoir by Michelle Obama

Michelle Obama is an extraordinary woman and her memoir is equally so. It's a fascinating and inspiring story, and obviously written in her true voice...you only have to be familiar with her speeches and many appearances on TV talk shows to know it. In fact, the writing rings so true that you can "hear" her. Were I still commuting, it would have been a wonderful audio book experience, but no matter, reading it was just fine as it came across as so immediate and animated. The 400-plus pages just flew by.

The book is divided into three main sections, plus an epilogue.

"Becoming Me" explores her childhood and teen years in the working-class South Side of Chicago, and her young adult years as she navigates her Ivy-League undergraduate experience at Princeton, law school at Harvard, and her partner-track work at a leading law firm – where she first met Barack Obama when he came on as a summer associate and she mentored him.

The second section is "Becoming Us", which describes their coming together as a couple, as ambitious young marrieds, and parents to Malia and Sasha. This is where we find out exactly what Barack Obama was doing as a Community Organizer, and how he moved on to the Illinois State Senate, to US Senator and then President of the United States. Through it all, their career and personal decisions for themselves and a couple were completely entwined, so theirs is truly a joint story.

Michelle Obama's professional accomplishments during this time are not as widely known or celebrated as her husband's, but they are equally impressive. She left the law firm, and became one of the forces behind a non-profit organization, Public Allies, which was created to help young people find their way into careers in public service and in non-profits. Following that, she became the Executive Director for Public Affairs at the University of Chicago Medical Center.

"Becoming More" covers the Obamas' White House years. It is fascinating to read how they rose to the demands of their positions, how they made adjustments to the way a First Family lives within the spotlight of the Presidency, and of the many experiences they all had in that setting. The pressure on them was even more intense than on other Presidents and their families, as the first African-Americans in that role. Being the first is always the most challenging and the most scrutinized, and we all know, and mainly due to the efforts of Michelle Obama, they more than rose to the occasion and became a shining example of what America is all about – a concept that is now being torn down and refuted by the Oval Office's current occupant.

Michelle Obama's time as First Lady is over, but at the age of fifty-five, we can expect to see much more from her. Just the other day, it was announced that a half-million dollars of earnings from the sale of her book would be donated to promote education and opportunities for girls. Every day I continue to be impressed by her. She is a force for what is good and positive, and how she reached the place she now occupies as a public figure should encourage millions of average Americans, especially young people, to do and be more. Reading her book can provide the inspiration for that.

Remember the Ladies – Founding Mothers: The Women Who Raised Our Nation by Cokie Roberts

Cokie Roberts is a journalist who is known for covering the political scene in Washington, DC. Her voice is familiar to many due to her commentaries on National Public Radio (NPR) and her years working for ABC News. She comes from a leading political family, the Boggs. Both her parents served as US Representatives from Louisiana, and her ancestry includes a number of prominent lawmakers reaching all the way back to the period of the Louisiana Purchase.

She has written a number of books with a political and/or historical focus, but this is the first for me. I found it to be an enlightening, lively account of some of the leading ladies of the Revolutionary Period, with special attention paid to Martha Washington and Abigail Adams. There has been so little attention paid to the women of the time, who generally stayed behind the scenes due to the conventions of society, that it is not easy to find a non-fictionalized account of their lives that is truly readable. 

I enjoyed the audio book as read by the author, but I would have liked to have heard even more about the remarkable women who were the subject of her book. I will be researching and adding some biographies of them to my reading list soon.